Discussion of sources, development, and uses of virtual reality concepts in secondary school pedagogy. The author has created a successful virtual community off line for use as a career/college experience for secondary school students.

Monday, March 16, 2009

It's Monday,and I'm sifting through the older posts, and going back and forth with Gardner's The Undisciplined Mind, and, very randomly, but with purposeful randomness, I have been reflecting on the curricular fact that my classes have been watching Shakespeare in Love, noting the constructiveness of the medium that was the Shakespearean theatre -- was "school" for the times: the question of his authorship, not really in doubt, for me, as the lively classroom of those times in that place seem analogous to these times: much to borrow from, much to be made anew, for all time to come. The creative workplace, the discipline of creativity, in the face of boundless resources, the 21st Century Classroom. Here I am, my mind adrift in Cyberspace (thanx, Mr. Gibson)

As I see it, Chapter 6 of Howard Gardner's The Disciplined Mind speaks of the "expert" who continually confronts the "misconceptions" and "inadequate representations" of undisciplined or "unschooled" understanding towards developing "enhanced understanding". This dynamic pushes back at the limits of the traditional, familiar, content-driven curricula. As I see it, Gardner points towards high school as the place to initiate the primary cognitive apprenticeship of adulthood.

Still digesting the "disruptive" nature of the integration of technology into education, there seems to be plenty of opportunity for disruption in these tricky economic times!

"We go forward without the facts; we learn the facts as we go along." Henry Ford